


Marvel Drabbles!

by hailtherandom



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (MIT Tony/Rhodey), (Platonic Clint/Kate and Clint Natasha), Aftercare, BDSM, Canon-Typical Violence, Clint Has Issues, Clint Needs a Hug, Dom/sub, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, MIT Era, Mild Blood and Injury, More Canon-Typical Violence, Multi, Nightmares, Other, Phil Coulson & Pepper Potts Friendship, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Referenced Clint Barton's Sad Fucking Childhood, Rough Kissing, Sad, Sam Wilson Feels, Sam Wilson Has A Bad Day, Steve Rogers Is a Good Bro, Subspace, Tony Stark Drinks A Lot Sometimes, Tracksuit Bros - Freeform, coffee dates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-11-08
Packaged: 2018-02-20 10:33:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2425508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hailtherandom/pseuds/hailtherandom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An archive of unrelated drabbles from tumblr prompts and fic ideas that didn't make it all the way to fic status.</p><p>Since AO3 doesn't attribute any individual tags to individual chapters, there are pairings and prompts in the chapter titles and ratings and warnings in the chapter notes, so it's easy to read what you like and skip what you don't! Work rating reflects the highest rating of all drabbles and is subject to change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Clint and Kate; "Surprise"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Kate & Clint, "Send me a “Surprise” and I’ll write a drabble about one character discovering something surprising about the other."
> 
> Rating: Gen  
> Pairing: Gen  
> Warnings: None

"Hey, Kate and narrow! Think fast!"

Kate snaps her head up to see Clint aiming an arrow about a foot to her left. She barely has time to duck out of the way when he fires it into the wall. It sinks into the mortar between the bricks and a little puff of dust pops out of the crack it makes. Kate opens her mouth to – to yell in surprise, to yell at Clint, to tell him off for putting yet another hole in his own apartment, she isn’t sure yet – when the arrow makes a loud popping noise and the nock drops off and a purple flower unfolds from the fletching. Kate stares at the arrow for a long moment, then turns back to Clint, who is wearing a huge grin on face, and then back to the arrow again. She reaches forward carefully and tugs the arrow out of the wall and examines the petals, thin and plastic and curling out away from the shaft. It smells faintly of gunpowder and some sort of perfume.

"Well?" Clint sounds equal parts excited and expectant. 

"You’re a futzing nerd," Kate says finally. "Did you make this."

"Damn straight I did. Hey, here." Clint reaches behind his couch and picks up a full quiver. It’s made of sturdy leather, two straps coming out of the top and two from the bottom, with subtle purple accents. "This is for you."

Kate blinks at the quiver. “Where’d you get that?”

"Made it." Clint holds the quiver out. "C’mon, take it."

Kate reaches over and takes the quiver from him, turning it over in her hands. It’s surprisingly lightweight for how sturdy it looks. She slings it over her left shoulder and ducks her head under the straps; it has buckles for adjustments at the bottom but there’s no point, really, it fits her perfectly already. She bounces a little on the balls of her feet, and it stays tight against her - not like some of the quivers she’s had before, which pull out when she jumps and smack against her lower back and leave the worst bruises. She supposed Clint must know the feeling, must have prepared for things like this when he was making the quiver–

"You know leatherwork?"

"Uh, sort of. I had help. With the design and stuff."

"Anyone I know?"

"An old friend, Jan. She’s better at this sort of thing than me."

"Well, tell her thanks, then." Kate goes into the kitchen and grabs her bow from the counter, then comes back to the living room and tacks up one of his target sheets. It’s full of holes in the middle, so she decides when she’s on the other side of the room to aim for the number 6 instead of knocking more of Clint’s wall out.

"Hey, what’s that arrow labeled with?" Clint asks.

Kate checks the tiny letter on the nock. “It says ‘SP’, why?”

"Maybe you shouldn’t–"

But the arrow’s already left the string and cleared the apartment, notched comfortably in the dip of the 6. Kate glances at Clint to ask what she maybe shouldn’t, but then she hears the same popping noise and the end of the arrow bursts into sparks like tiny fireworks. Kate freezes, then laughs as the arrow sparks and sizzles bright purple and white, then jumps over the couch to pull it out of the wall once it stops. “Was it supposed to do that?”

"Yeah, those are the sparkler arrows," Clint says. "Most of ‘em are purple, but there are some other ones."

"Are they all sparklers?" Kate asks, pulling the quiver off to look at the nocks.

"No, no, there are a bunch. Here." He holds his hand out and she passes him the quiver again. He sorts through the arrows until he finds a awkward-shaped one labeled ‘FW’, then hands her the quiver back and picks up his bow. "Let’s go on the roof."

He walks out the door and up the stairs and Kate watches him go for a second before she drops the burnt out arrow and trails after him. It’s late enough that all the neighbors have gone to bed, and there’s only a bit of charcoal smoke still lingering as she sits on the edge of the room barrier. Clint stands in the very center of the roof, the ‘FW’ arrow nocked on his bow. “You ready for this?”

"I think so?"

Clint draws the bow and aims straight up. Kate recognizes the tension in his back, the slow breath out, the relaxing of his fingers, and then the weird arrow disappears into the dark of the sky.

"…Clint?"

"Wait for it."

She’s almost afraid that the arrow is going to come back down and smack him in the head, and then the sky explodes in a bright shower of color, purple sparks illuminating the clouds coming over the edge of Brooklyn. Sparks fall quickly and burn out before they can get anywhere near any buildings and the purple fades back into dark blue and faint yellow streetlights. 

"Clint."

"Don’t fire those inside, okay?"

She turns back to look at him, and he’s still staring up at the sky. “Where’d you get that?”

"Same ‘s the rest. I made it. With help."

"Stark?"

"Stark." Finally, he looks at her. "You like ‘em? There are a couple more in there, but I can get more if you want."

"What’s this for, Clint?"

"Nothing, really, just…" Clint rubs the back of his neck with one hand. “‘m glad you’re home, Kate. Real glad."

Her chest tightens a little and she slowly unfolds herself from the roof edge to face him. “You idiot.”

His eyes widen a little, and then she’s throwing herself into his arms, wrapping her own tightly around his shoulders, face buried in his neck. He hesitates for a second, then hugs her back, tight, like he’s afraid she’ll disappear again. 

"I missed you too," she whispers, because she knows the answer he didn’t have to say.


	2. Clint and Natasha; "Come Back"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Natasha: "Send me a "Come back" and I'll write a drabble about character asking the other to return (they parted after a fight, the other has been missing for a while, etc)."
> 
> Rating: T+  
> Pairing: Gen  
> Warnings: References to previous violence and abuse.

His eyes are icy blue, but hers are dark red.

The nice thing about working for SHIELD is that no one will ever think that they don’t have their demons. Even if only a dozen people in the entire organization have read her file, no one would ever question Natasha if she broke down in front of a KGB assassin; even though he has told exactly four people about the circus, not a single damn person would be surprised if the first few notes of music ended a life. Nothing can be a surprise - least of all field work. 

But scars are scars and no expectation can heal the way Natasha wakes up from nightmares paralyzed or the way Clint claws back from his screaming. There are monsters and magic and things none of them were ever trained for lurking in their heads and they all come out at night to wreck havoc unbounded.

Clint has a better read on Natasha than anyone else; so much time spent in barracks together makes him sensitive enough to feel the slight tensing of her muscles as she transitions from terrified asleep to terrified awake. From anyone else’s perspective, she’s just lying there, staring at the ceiling, working on becoming conscious again after perhaps a few too few hours, but to Clint and Natasha, she is recounting the same gloved hands ripping into her chest and shooting through her abdomen and the quietest whispers of the words that hurt the worst. It’s no longer their SHIELD-sponsored hotel, their rooms at Stark Tower, their shitty floor mattress beds in their shitty safe houses in shitty Ukraine - it’s nineteen ninety-one and the Iron Curtain is coming up after nearly fifty years and she knows she will be cast out and on the streets of Moscow (unless, hands curving around her shoulders whisper, unless she can still be useful to them) and the guns in her hands are welded to her knuckles and the boots on her feet are drenched in blood and brain matter and in the middle of it all, Clint stands before her seven year old self, whispering, “Come back, Natasha. Come back to me.”

And she blinks at the ceiling and everything is a little less concrete grey, a little more acrylic paint white (or ‘starlight’, as Stark insisted when she moved in) and the body to her right is warm and breathing with hands caressing her face instead of dead or clasped around her throat. “Come on, Tasha, I’m here. Come back. This is New York. We’re not in Russia, we’re in Manhattan. We’re home.”

"Home," she murmurs. 

"Home," he confirms. His thumb wipes away a tear track she didn’t notice falling and he presses a kiss to her temple. "It’s safe here."

"It’s not," because it never is.

"Yeah, I suppose not." But she knows he’s right.


	3. Tony/Rhodey; "Post-Sex Cuddling"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony/Rhodey: "post-sex cuddling"
> 
> Rating: T+  
> Pairing: Tony/Rhodey  
> Warnings: Vague talk of sex and father issues.

"So what were you saying before?"

"What?"

"You were saying something important."

Rhodey stares at the ceiling, one hand rubbing over his face. “Damned if I can remember. I guess it wasn’t that important.”

Tony grins a little. “Nothing a good fucking won’t remind you of.”

Rhodey holds up a hand. “Easy, Stark. Not all of us have your stamina. I need another ten, twenty minutes.” 

"I was kidding." Tony stretches, then rolls over, throwing one arm and one leg across Rhodey. Rhodey pretends to put up a fight, but eventually lets Tony tuck his head into the crook of Rhodey’s neck.

"You ready for next month?" Rhodey asks conversationally.

Tony groans and turns further into the pillow. “I’m sure dad’ll send a nice bottle of scotch or a plane or something.”

"He won’t come?"

Tony shrugs one shoulder. “Nah. Mom probably will, but I don’t think he’ll remember.”

"Oh." Rhodey bites his lower lip, then gently nudges Tony’s head with his own. "You still want round two?"

"Nah."

"Alright." Rhodey closes his eyes and rests this cheek on the top of Tony’s head. Tony sighs under him, breath ghosting over the skin on Rhodey’s neck, and Rhodey shivers.

They lie in silence for a while, then Rhodey murmurs, “Hey Tone.”

"Yeah, Rhodey?"

"I’m proud of you, you know."

Tony stiffens a little in his arms, then forcibly relaxes. “Yeah?”

"You’re getting out with two Masters degrees in four years. You’re gonna own that company in five years, I guarantee it." Rhodey reaches over and tips Tony’s head up so he can make eye contact. "You’re gonna do some great things, Tony Stark."

Tony’s eyes are soft, slightly hazy from sex, and the corner of his mouth is quirked up, just a little. Just enough that Rhodey knows he isn’t faking it. “Rhodey…”

"Shh." Rhodey puts two fingers over Tony’s mouth. "No arguing." And for once in his life, Tony doesn’t argue.

Rhodey smiles softly. “Good. Now come back here.” 

Tony settles back against Rhodey’s side, face pressed into his neck and one arm draped around his chest. Rhodey trails his fingers up and down Tony’s spine and things that yes, Tony Stark is going to do great things.


	4. Pepper and Coulson; Coffee Date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pepper Potts and Phil Coulson: "Coulson and Pepper being highly competent bffs? Cuz there needs to be more of that in the world."
> 
> Rating: Gen  
> Pairing: Gen  
> Warnings: None

Pepper closes her eyes and massages her temples, then curls forward slowly until her forehead is resting on her notebook. She sighs to herself, and it feels nice, so she does it again, teeth worrying her lower lip until something white settles in her periphery. She glances up and is greeted by a warm cup and a warm smile as Phil sits down next to her. “Long day?”

Pepper laughs and picks her coffee up with both hands. “Every day at Stark Industries is a long day.”

He hums in commiseration and hefts his own briefcase onto the cafe table. “I know the feeling. One of my agents brought me six missions’ worth of unfinished paperwork today. Claimed concussion so that he could get out of it.”

One corner of Pepper’s mouth curls up. “Did he have a concussion?”

Phil rolls his eyes. “Probably. But half of SHIELD is concussed at any one time. I’ve finished my paperwork while in critical at least three times.” He shrugs and takes a sip from his own cup. “Brain damage is brain damage, though, so regulations forbid me from archiving his reports if there’s any chance they could be… ‘tampered with’.” He wrinkles his nose and Pepper laughs.

"Never tell Tony that. I swear, he’d blast himself into the ceiling without a helmet until he couldn’t see straight if it got him out of his PR meetings."

"I’ll trade you," Phil offers. "I’d much rather do Stark Industries PR than wrangle half of my agents. You’d scare them all straight."

"Damn right I would." She raises her cup in salutation and he taps his against it, and they both drink, eyes closed in pleasure.

They sit around the same cafe table for forty-five minutes, head bowed like they’re sharing office gossip instead of international secrets, like their partners are run-of-the-mill average Americans instead of super-genius inventors and internationally recognized musicians, and the world passes by, unassuming. No one suspects that the helicopter that lifts off five minutes and half a mile away belongs to the quiet man eating a croissant, or that the limo that only has to go five blocks through midtown is for the woman sipping coffee next to him. 

Pepper calls Phil on a secure, encrypted line routed through seven different carriers that night and says, “Same time next week?”

He grins into his burner phone and says, “Sure thing,” before throwing it into the Potomac.


	5. Sam and Steve and Natasha; "Blanket Fort"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam & Steve & Natasha: "Sam builds a blanket fort and makes Steve and Nat watch movies in it with him"
> 
> Rating: T+  
> Pairing: Can be read as gen or OT3, whichever you prefer.  
> Warnings: Sam Wilson has a Bad Day.

Steve could swear he just did the laundry the other day, but the closet is all but empty when he goes to get a clean set of sheets. He checks the lower shelves too, but there’s nothing on them except for a couple of spare towels and an old jacket that must belong to Sam. Steve goes back down to the basement and checks the dryer, but there are no sheets or blankets in there either. Natasha’s been out for a couple days, so Steve decides to go ask Sam.

He raps Sam’s door a couple times, then opens it a little to poke his head in. “Hey, Sam, do you know where–” 

His sentence cuts off as he’s greeted with, not the sight of Sam’s face, but with the sight of half a dozen blankets draped over the end of Sam’s bed and what look like several chairs from the kitchen. Steve blinks a few times, unsure of whether he should leave or not, but then Sam’s voice comes out of the huge blanket tent. “What’s up, man?”

"Um…" Steve shifts from foot to foot. "I was wondering where all the clean blankets were but I think I found ‘em."

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry." 

Sam’s voice sounds unusually flat. Steve frowns a little. “Are you okay, Sam?”

He’s greeted with an extended silence, just long enough that he thinks Sam might not have heard him, and then Sam says. “Wanna come under?”

"Um… Okay." Steve sidles in the rest of the way and ducks under one edge of the blanket tent. Sam is curled up on the other side, wrapped in a couple more blankets, his laptop open and paused on some movie that Steve hasn’t seen yet. Sam edges away a little to give Steve room to sit, then slumps back down again.

"Sam? What is this?" Steve asks, looking around him. The tent is still impressively sized on the inside, considering the size of Sam’s room. It doesn’t mean there’s a lot of room for Steve to move, but it does mean that he doesn’t have to worry about knocking anything over with head. And yet Sam is tucked into the opposite corner, taking up much less space than he usually does.

"I wanted somewhere quiet," Sam mutters. "Soft and dark. Stole the blankets from the closet."

Steve tries to make eye contact, tries to study what he can see of Sam’s face, but only Sam’s left eye and the bridge of his nose is visible under the blanket he’s cocooned himself in. “What happened?”

"Bad day," Sam says quietly. "You know."

Steve considers it, and then nods. “I know. Want me to stay?”

"Yeah." Sam reaches out from under his blanket with one hand and taps his laptop. The movie turns back on, muted enough that Steve has to strain to listen to the dialogue. Sam turned subtitles on, so Steve carefully presses toward the middle of the tent so he can get a better view. Sam doesn’t pull away again, but Steve is careful to leave some space between them. 

They make it through one movie and are halfway through a second - Steve doesn’t know what movie it is, has barely been paying attention to the plot - before Natasha comes home. Steve hears the door click open on the other side of the house and is immediately alert. He supposes Sam must notice the change in his demeanor, because he burrows a little deeper in his blanket cocoon and turns away from Steve. 

"Should I go…?"

"It’s Nat," Sam says faintly.

"What do you want–?"

"She can come."

"Okay. I’ll go get her, okay?" Steve asks gently, and when Sam nods and unburrows a little, he rolls out of the blanket tent and goes to find Natasha.

She’s obviously exhausted from whatever mission she’s been on, hair in disarray and dark circles outlining her eyes, but she looks alert enough when Steve comes out of Sam’s room and sweeps her into a quick hug. “Hey soldier.

"Hey yourself," Steve says. "How was it?"

She shakes her head and brushes her bangs out of her eyes. “It’s gone better. Hill managed to get her lot in eventually, but I got the shit kicked out of me first.” Steve becomes suddenly aware of the way that she’s favoring her left side.

"Are you alright?"

Natasha waves his concern off. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Got patched up before I came home. Everything’s fine.” She looks around the living room, as though she hadn’t immediately swept the entire premise as soon as she came in. “Where’s Sam?”

"He’s in his room," Steve says. "In, um. He made some sort of tent?" Natasha raises her eyebrows. "He’s having a bad day."

"Huh. That doesn’t seem like Sam," Natasha muses. "He doesn’t usually hide from stuff."

"I don’t think he’s hiding. I was in there with him for a while…" Steve nods toward his room. "You should come. I think he wants you."

A bare hint of a frown flickers across her face, but it’s gone before Steve can think anything of it. “Okay. Give me a second.” She disappears into the guest room for a moment, then comes back bare-footed in a pair of loose sweatpants and a tank top. Steve makes a sweeping ‘after you’ motion and Natasha goes into Sam’s room and ducks into the tent. Steve follows after her, closing the bedroom door and tucking himself back into the corner of the blanket tent. Nat is lying next to Sam, her head propped on his leg, and the movie is playing again. Steve watches them for a couple minutes, then leans back against the wall through the blankets and settles in to watch the rest of the movie. Only once the end credits start to roll does he look up again and finds that Sam and Natasha are both sound asleep, draped over each other. Steve smiles and tugs down one of the edge blankets and covers Natasha with it, then crawls out of the tent to leave them to it.


	6. Clint/Kate; "Undress" and "Kiss"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate/Clint: "Send me a "Undress" and I'll write a drabble about one character watching the other get naked" and "Send me a "Kiss" and I'll write a drabble about their first kiss."
> 
> Rating: T+  
> Pairing: Clint/Kate  
> Warnings: Canon-typical violence, one bullet graze, and some aggressive making out.

They've kissed three times in the time they've known each other.

Two were for cover. Nothing special. Happens to the best of them, Kate knows, and she doesn't feel bad or slighted at all. She knows that kissing Clint was something that she had to do in order to not get spotted, so she did it and he fell into it easy, like a second skin. Both times, their mark and their markers turn away, because Natasha was right when she said that public displays of affection make people uncomfortable. Then Clint slipped away before Kate had the chance to open her eyes and she went back on surveillance. It's fine. They all know how it works in the Avenging business.

The third time was in an adrenaline-fueled rush of soles hitting the ground and angry Russian and blood dribbling down her arm and onto her bow. The Bros aren't half bad with a gun, but they're not half good either; a hit on Kate's arm is still a hit, but it's not a good hit, and she's swearing at the top of her lungs as she sprints toward the door of Clint's apartment building. She doesn't have a key but she does have boots so she runs at it at full force and kicks it down. The wood splinters easier that it probably should have but she doesn't care, she's running up the stairs, nocking an arrow, firing straight into the stomach of a man aiming a gun at her and ducking when the bullet slams into the wall. The man groans in pain on the stairs and reaches for the arrow. Kate kicks his hand away and says, "Don't. Leave it. You'll bleed out."

"You crazy broads know nothing, bro," the man says, yanking at the arrow. He hisses in pain but the arrow refuses to move more than half a centimeter.

Kate stares at him, chest heaving, and says, "Suit yourself," and then an arrow whizzes over her shoulder straight into the shoulder of a tracksuited man with a military grade rifle. Kate stares at him, then whirls around to see Clint standing in the hallway, bare fingers ready to draw another arrow. "He shouts at her to get down, and she drops a split second before a flurry of bullets hit the wall behind her, and Clint is jumping over her, three arrows nocked, running after the two injured Bros, shouting and aiming and firing and Kate hears the soft flump of a net arrow deploying and several bodies hitting the ground had. The Bros swear at Clint in Russian and Clint swears right back at them, words that Kate has never heard and can barely hear now over the ringing in her ears. She sees Clint disappear through the front entrance, firing arrows as fast as he can at the sound of tires squealing on the pavement.

The sound of a van fades fast. Clint trudges back, drops his aim, releasing the tension on his last arrow, and kicks the doorframe. "God dammit."

He turns toward Kate, eyes wide, and says, "You're hurt," but Kate's already standing, one hand pressed against the wall. He runs up the stairs to catch her and she wraps one arm around his shoulders, then fists her hand in his hair. 

"I almost died."

"But you didn't."

His eyes are dark with the adrenaline pumping through him right now, wide with barely concealed panic, and the thundering in her chest and the pounding in her head drive her forward under her mouth crashes into his.

It's not pretty. Kate's had some good kisses in her life, and this isn't one of them. It's angry and desperate and scared and relieved all at once, too aggressive, too hard, both her hands are in his hair, dragging him down, and once the initial shock passes, his hands are on her hips, pulling her close, like he's afraid that she'll fall and disappear if he lets go.

She pulls back, finally, to make sure he's not about to bolt - it would be just like Clint Barton, to run for it and disappear just like he always does - but no, he's still here, clinging to her hips and panting shallowly, staring at her like she's a miracle. 

"Upstairs." His voice is rough. "Your arm."

"Oh yeah." He pushes her back up the stairs and she stumbles up to his apartment. The door's still open, so she goes inside, standing awkwardly by the couch. He closes the door behind him and draws all three locks, then disappears into the bathroom for his first aid kit. She yanks off her finger guard with her teeth, then undoes her buckle, throwing both on the floor next to the couch. Lucky probably won't eat them. It's fine.

The first aid kit lands on the cushion next to her and then Clint's back, hesitantly reaching toward her and pulling back. "Take your shirt... Thing... Whatever it is. Take it off. You might need stitches."

"It's kind of a whole thing."

"Okay, take the whole thing off."

Kate reaches up and unzips her suit, shrugging out of the top part, and then, after a moment, shrugging out of the bottom part too. She kicks her boots and crumpled, bloodied spandex to the side, then sits hard on the couch. Clint just stares for a moment, then shakes his head and says, "Show me where."

It's just a graze, but it's a wide one, still sluggishly bleeding. He rips open a gauze pad with his teeth and presses it hard against her arm. She gasps and reaches out and grabs what she can find; the closest thing is his hair, so she yanks hard when the pad comes away soaked in red and a dry one takes its place. 

Clint is still panting, just a little, but his lazer-like focus is solely for her wounds right now. He uncaps his bottle of rubbing alcohol, splashes some on her arm and rubs it off again, heedless of how she hisses and groans and tries to pull his hair out of his scalp. He's muttering to himself, something about butterfly bandages and stitches, and Kate tenses until he pulls out a roll of medical tape and starts taping spare pads to her arm. "Not too bad," he says, more to himself than to her. "Could be worse."

"You been shot?"

"Yeah."

He doesn't offer anything else, so she doesn't ask, just flexes her arm when he releases it. Moving it too high makes it hurt, makes her feel a little dizzy, so she keeps it tucked by her side.

She looks down at him, still crouching in front of her, surrounded by bloodied medical supplies, and says, "You know, that was the first time I really kissed you."

"I– oh," Clint says. Then, "Huh."

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry?"

Kate shrugs her good shoulder. "I'm not."

Clint blinks.

"I know you said–"

"You're alive," he says hoarsely. "I wasn't sure... But you are. I don't care."

"Me neither." She pulls him forward again and he kisses her hard, kneeling between her bare legs, fingers pressing dents into bloodied skin.

They've kissed four times in the time they've known each other.

And then she stops counting.


	7. Clint/Natasha; "Aftercare"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint/Natasha: "Nat just holding Clint while he's in sub space. Talking and light kisses. That's about all I got. You don't even need to write anything. I just needed to share this."
> 
> Rating: M  
> Pairing: Clint/Natasha  
> Warnings: Non-explicit BDSM, subspace, and referenced sexual content.

The long, long seconds during which Clint finally comes are some of the purest seconds of silence that Natasha has ever experienced. His back arches hard, every muscle tight as the strings of his favored bow, his face twisted, mouth open, no breath or sound or any hint of movement. It’s like he’s in suspended animation, and Natasha thinks it’s one of the most beautiful things she’s ever seen.

And when the moment stretches and stretches and finally snaps, she catches him and he doubles over on himself, panting harshly, eyes squeezed tight. His chest heaves from the exertion but he lets himself be moved easily as long as she doesn’t expect him to go still again.

He curls in on himself sometimes and she curls around him, threading arms around his chest, tangling their legs together. His back burns with livid welts - most red, some purple - and it scorches her chest as she pulls him back to her, burying her face in the crook of his neck as he catches his breath. He shudders in her grasp but always presses back into her. Her skin is cool, slightly sweat-dampened and chilled by the air. It feels nice.

His breathing is soft little rushes against their pillows now. She brushes her fingertips down the center of his chest, parting beads of sweat over faded nail marks. He shudders when she brushes over the deepest scratches, but she rubs away his discomfort with quiet words and soft palms over the planes of his chest and she whispers, “we’re okay.”

She whispers “we’re okay” because they, as an entity, are okay. They as a single unit are curls away from the trauma of life and work and Stark’s robot butler and their pasts banging on the door, breathing in tandem - his breath in, her breath out. She whispers “we’re okay” because in this headspace, so much of him being okay depends on her, on her praise and her punishment and her hands holding his face steady when he starts to slip past subspace and into something deeper and darker and dangerous, on her hand on the whip, her hand on the chains, her fingers curled inside him and her body wrapped around him to keep him centered when he starts to drift. She whispers “we’re okay” because so often, so much of her being okay depends on him, him being alive and him being okay and him staying in the present and not fading back into a mist of electric blue, of him rolling out of bed in the morning and pushing one hearing aid into his ear and saying good morning with that stupid smirk of his and never ever missing a shot ever.

There are vivid bite marks on the back of his neck, along his shoulders, down his throat. She traces over one, deep enough that the faintest outlines of her teeth are still visible. He shudders under the touch and she presses her lips to it softly. “You were so good, Clint.”

He hums in appreciation.

"You let me take you so far," Natasha murmurs. His back is still burning; the red is fading to pink but the bruises are just as lurid purple as before. Clint doesn’t always let Natasha take him so far, but he trusts her, when he needs to, to drop him down so deep that no icy blue haze can reach him, that no green-masked double crossers are coming for him, that no mob of hundreds are paying a fiver apiece to see him. Natasha will always take him as far as he lets her, and she knows the hell she will pay if she ever tries to take him beyond that.

Clint rolls his neck a little, wincing at the popping noises in his spine, and then turns over so he can curl into Natasha’s chest. Any other time, he would press his face into her breasts and make jokes until he was laughing into them, or try to tease her until he got the rise he was looking for; now, he just lies still, forehead against her collarbone, breathing steadily. With his eyes closed, his face is completely open, free of tension and badly suppressed self-hatred.

Natasha prefers it when he looks like this. 

And, because he knows she always wants to ask, even though she never will, he cracks one eye open and gazes up at her and says, “You were so good too.”

She looks down at him with no expression because she cannot afford to let expression break out, not when Clint’s like this, but deep inside some tiny terror is soothed, and instead of “thank you” she says:

"Go to sleep, Barton. I’ll be here when you wake up."

He smiles; he knows. He sleeps, and when he wakes up again after several hours, she is there.


	8. Clint; Sad Headcanons Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Sad headcanons for Skye about Clint being uneasy around Avengers Tower when Tony starts drinking.
> 
> Rating: T+  
> Pairing: none  
> Warnings: References to past child abuse, past alcoholism, anxiety in group situations, all of which are par for the course in sad Clint headcanons.

Clint hates it when Tony drinks.

Not just a beer or two for social occasions, they all take up the bottle and clink them together, talking and laughing, during parties and nights out that are half for fun and half for good PR. Clint likes beer, and he likes drinking with the rest of the Avengers, and he likes a good buzz now and then, so he's not so hypocritical to deny them that.

But when Tony is breached on a project and every half hour produces loud explosions that smell like acrid smoke and melted plastic, and Bruce is sitting in the kitchen reading instead of trying to put fires out, Clint starts watching, pulling himself back to the shadows of the rooms, because once the explosions peter out and Tony emerges with ash smudged on his face, glass tumblers and scotch are rarely far behind. 

And more often than not, when things start going downhill fast, Tony is drunk by dinner, trying to eat with one hand and gesticulate with the other to Bruce (who carries on eating quietly) and Steve (who is surprisingly good to bounce ideas off of) and Natasha (who parries all of his thinly-veiled insults with completely blatant ones) and ranting in between about how Isaac Newton is an asshole and how the laws of physics are bullshit. Clint takes advantage of the distractions and scarfs his food down, then carefully slips out of his seat and puts his plate in the sink and retreats before anyone can tear their eyes away from Tony and the glass that he's precariously waving around.

Clint hears something shatter and a chill from thirty-one years ago runs down his spine. His eyes flicker around the halls, cataloguing everywhere he could slip into if Tony decided that the other Avengers weren't good enough entertainment. The air vents are an obvious choice, but a sulfuric haze is still drifting lazily out of the labs and int the elevator shafts, so he'd rather not risk passing out from smoke inhalation. He shoves his hands in his pockets and paces the hallway slowly, turning a couple of coins in his pocket from buying coffee that morning between his fingers, then pulls out the largest one and flips it high in the air. It makes a pleasant pinging noise against his nail.

Clint regrets sometimes that Avengers Tower doesn't have a barn. There's absolutely no reason why they would need one, but he misses, on occasion, the opportunity to crawl into one of the haystacks and smell straw everywhere until voices stopped echoing out of the house. So much of the Tower is glass and steel and towering windows and polished floors, and sound really carries when people aren't trying to stop it from carrying. 

His path changes, directed toward one of the sitting rooms. Tony's voice is quieter here, but he can still hear chemical formulas like threats. It's ridiculous, really. Tony has never done a damn thing to any of them drunk that he wouldn't do sober, but Clint once watched Rhodey rinse hundred-proof something out of his eyes after one particularly terrible battle. Tony was apologetic and Rhodey was fine and forgiving, but his eyes had been red and bloodshot for the rest of the evening and something about that made Clint pull away, do his press, and disappear into his quarters to contemplate passing out in his shower before anyone could ask him where he was going. No one pressed him in the morning, and Clint could pretend that Natasha always watched him extra-closely the day after missions, and no one ever brought it up. No one ever  _brings_  it up. It's fine with him.

The coin pings loudly as it grazes the high ceiling.

Clint thinks he hears glass shatter, but he could be imagining it. He could be hearing echoes in the sleek ceiling, the slick sounds of a quarter cutting through the air and landing in the palm of his hand. The clink of Barney flipping pennies at bottles filled with rocks and sand. The hiss and rush of dry dirt as it's released from it's class confines. It could be anything.

"Barton?"

Clint whirls around and recognizes the quarter leaving his fingers before he even has a chance to see who said his name, or if anyone said it at all. He sees a flash of red and then there's a loud crack as the quarter embeds itself halfway into the plaster of the hallway wall. Clint blinks at the sliver of metal, and then down at the slash of red, now in the form of Natasha, dropped into a low crouch with one arm over her head.

"Shit."

Natasha glances up at him under her arm, then slowly lowers it. "Okay then."

"Fuck, Nat, I'm sorry, I didn't hear you coming."

"I gathered." Natasha pushes herself up and leans in closely to inspect the half of the quarter still visible from the wall. "Did you shoot this?"

"No, I threw it." Clint rubs the back of his neck nervously. "'m really sorry, Nat."

"You  _threw_  it?" she repeats. She pinches the edge of the quarter between her thumb and two fingers and pulls. The quarter doesn't move. "How did you manage that?"

Clint shrugs one shoulder, even though Natasha's back is turned to him. "Learned as a kid. You never know when you'll need to have a weapon on hand."

"And you figured the best place to have a weapon on hand was at the Tower," Natasha says evenly.

Clint's stomach clenches a little.

"Look, you just took me by surprise."

"Clearly." Natasha gives one last pull at the coin and gives it up for lost. "What are you doing out here? Dinner isn't over."

"What are  _you_  doing out here?" Clint counters. "If dinner isn't over?"

Natasha frowns at him. "Looking for you, мудак. Why'd you leave?"

Clint looks down at the floor. "Just felt like it. Don't like being around all the time."

"You think Stark's gonna yell at you or something?"

"I think Stark might smash a glass over my face, sure."

Natasha snorts. "Why the hell would he do that?"

"It's not like it's the first time someone has."

Out of the edge of his vision, he can see something shift very slightly in Natasha's face. She doesn't say anything, so he doesn't either; instead, his hands find his pockets again and he runs his fingertips around the edge of a nickel.

"Thor's putting Stark to bed," Natasha says eventually. "It's safe to come back."

"Maybe later."

She knows he has no intentions of coming back, but she agrees. "I'll keep something in the microwave for you."

"Thanks."

She nods and her expression softens a little. "Eat it?"

"I will."

"I'll come after you if you don't."

He gives her a small smile. "I look forward to it."

She turns and goes back down the hallway. Clint digs around for his keys and goes up to the wall and tries to dig the quarter out. It's pretty firmly in there, so he decides to leave it, just in case he might need to grab it again later.


End file.
